


Business Decisions

by SML8180



Series: Family Sticks Together [9]
Category: Markiplier-fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: A Few Original Characters are Mentioned, Ed Actually Means Well, Google is Stubborn, He's Just Abrasive Sometimes, How Do I Tag, Human Trafficking Mention, Seriously how do i tag, Silver's Trying to Help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25590718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SML8180/pseuds/SML8180
Summary: After discovering one of the children he'd thought went to a good home turned out to have been taken in by a notorious criminal, Ed has some work to do in making his business' system more secure to keep the same thing from happening again. Even with everything he knows, it's far too much for just one person to handle alone, and Ed is forced to turn to another Ego for help.
Series: Family Sticks Together [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589101
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	1. Identifying Flaws in the System

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last story I have fully written and edited for this series right now. After these 4 chapters, the main storyline for this series will probably go on hold for a few weeks so I can build up another back-log.
> 
> That being said, I will most likely still be posting in the time this particular series isn't updating. I've got a few Sanders Sides pieces I've been working on, and a few other things that I've been toying around with, so be sure to keep an eye out for those!

Ed had gotten to the manor just a couple of weeks ago, and he’d spent most of that time trying to identify the flaws in his business’ system that allowed Norman Packer to slip through and get his hands on one of their kids. The cowboy hadn’t even really unpacked any of his things; everything he’d brought with him was still in boxes and suitcases piled in the closet and corner of his room. He didn’t care about that, though, not right now, anyways; he had far more pressing matters to attend to.

Ed let out a groan, rubbing at his eyes under his tinted glasses. He’d found a number of flaws in his system, and he was sure there were plenty more he hadn’t found. Two weeks of work and he’d ended up with answers that only led to more questions in the long run. He’d gotten next to no sleep, and at this point, he was running off caffeine and his own desire to keep other kids in his system safe. Doctor What’s-His-Name was gonna chew him out, for sure, but he really didn’t care. While he was thinking about how much work there was left to do, there was a careful knock on Ed’s door.

“I’m busy,” Ed grumbled, turning back to his laptop, which was perched on his criss-crossed legs as he was propped up against his headboard, since his desk was also still covered with boxes.

“Doc sent me up to make sure you eat something,” Silver’s voice came through the door. “You weren’t at breakfast again, and nobody’s seen you all day.”

At the mention of food, Ed’s stomach growled, and he finally realized the time, it was nearly 2:30 in the afternoon, and he hadn’t eaten anything aside from a Cliff bar he’d had in one of the boxes he’d moved into the manor with. That had been at 7:30 that morning.

“Fine,” Ed simply replied, hardly looking up from the screen in front of him as the bedroom door opened and Silver entered, in his regular civilian clothing, carrying a plate with a sandwich and some chips.

“What’ve you been up to in here?”

“Tryin’ to find the cracks Packer slipped through.”

“I probably shouldn’t be surprised. That whole situation was pretty messed up.”

“Yeah,” the cowboy sighed, picking up half the sandwich from the plate and taking a bite. “I’ve got my guys checking in on every kid we can to make sure they’re all okay, and so far, so good.”

“So, what do you actually  _ do _ ?” Silver questioned, setting the plate in his hand down on the bedside table.

“Sell kids.”

“You  _ what _ ? That’s illegal!”

“It’s perfectly legal.”

“That’s child trafficking!”

“No it ain’t.”

“How is it  _ not _ ?”

Ed signed, looking up from the screen. “We’re kinda more of an adoption system. But, we run independent of the state and all that. I’ll admit, originally, most of what we did wasn’t  _ exactly  _ legal, but that was early on, rebranded and all that. Had to go into hiding and borderline shut everything down for a while, but it worked out.”

“You could just say you run a private adoption program.”

“Eh.”

“And, hold up, you’ve gone into hiding before?”

“Yep. Twice, actually. Had to almost shut everything down in the rebranding process, then later on, had to lay low because we ended up shutting down a child trafficking ring, and ended up with guys after my head.”

“That’s, intense.”

“Par for the course, in what I do. With how involved we get, it’s only a matter of time until you piss off the wrong people. Or the right ones, depending on how you look at it.”

“Guess so,” Silver nodded. “What’re you going to do when you find all the issues?”

“Never gonna find  _ all  _ of ‘em, but once I find the real bad ones, well… I don’t really know. Gotta find a way to fix them. Right now, we need to get better background checks, maybe some sort of facial recognition if we can find the tech, gotta find a better way to keep track of the kids, too; check-in teams are having trouble finding some of them for one reason or another.”

“Maybe Google could help.”

“Google?”

“Right, right, you’re still new,” the hero chuckled. “We’ve got an Ego around here called Google IRL. Made by Google themselves, probably  _ the  _ most advanced piece of technology you’ll ever encounter. Smart as hell, and not just because he’s got the internet in his head,” he explained. “If you need to figure out some crazy tech, he’s the one who can help you.  _ If  _ you can convince him to help.”

“Great…” Ed couldn’t help but groan. “I’ll figure somethin’ out, I guess.”

Silver nodded in response, “I’ll leave you to it. I gotta go change and make the rounds.”

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Ed let out a short chuckle as Silver left the room, shutting the door behind himself, leaving the cowboy on his own once again.

It took several more hours of work for Ed to feel satisfied that he had found the major problems in the system his business had set up. He’d gone to have dinner with the other Egos, save for Silver and Dr. Iplier, who were both off working. After eating, he’d simply gone right back to his room and back to work. By the time he was finally satisfied with his findings, it was getting late, but he was fairly sure that Google would still be up, considering the Ego wasn’t exactly human. So, the cowboy gathered up his notes, and made his way to the room that had been designated as Google’s office.


	2. The First Attempt

Google was sitting at a desk in his office, surrounded by various computer parts, tinkering with a beat-up looking laptop that belonged to Dr. Iplier. The doctor had asked him to see if there was any way he could fix the aging machine, as it was starting to seemingly give up on him. As he was working, he heard a knock at the door, and hardly looked up when he gave whoever it was on the other side permission to enter the room.

“What’re you up to?” questioned a voice holding a fair southern accent that Google immediately knew was Ed’s.

“Dr. Iplier requested I make some repairs to his laptop,” Google told him. “What do you want?”

“I was wonderin’ if you could help me with something,” Ed replied, coming up to Google’s side.

“If you require assistance with a computer, leave it on the workbench by the door and I will get to it when I have completed repairs on this one.”

“It’s not computer help I need.”

“Then what  _ do  _ you need help with? I am not intended to give advice on trivial matters.”

“You know security stuff, right? Firewalls, encryption, and all that?”

“Of course I do. I am surprised that  _ you  _ know about these topics, however.”

Ed couldn’t help but roll his eyes behind his tinted glasses. “I gotta know this stuff with my business. I need your help patching up some holes in my system that ended up letting someone slip in.”

“If you know about these things, I am sure you can handle the problem yourself,” Google replied bluntly.

“I don’t know  _ enough _ to handle it. And I sure as hell don’t have the manpower to spare on it.”

“Then I suppose you will have to figure something out.”

The cowboy sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Oh, come  _ on _ , ya damn tin can! I’m askin’ for your help this  _ one  _ time.”

“This  _ one time _ will end up taking up  _ my  _ time in the long run. If you desire my assistance, I suggest you come up with a convincing argument as to  _ why _ I should spend my time rectifying human errors.”

Ed grumbled curses under his breath, leaving the office. He had half a mind to not slam the door behind him, considering it was late and most of the Egos in the house were asleep by now. He went back up to his room, setting his notes aside and got changed, deciding it best to head to bed and try to figure something out once he’d gotten some rest. He knew he’d have to come up with a convincing argument if he was going to get that damn robot to help him.


	3. Making a Convincing Argument

Ed woke up in the morning after what ended up a fitful night’s sleep. He showered and got dressed, making a call to one of the people he’d left in charge of the business while he had to lay low, attempting to figure out what to do.

“I just dunno what to do, Caroline,” the cowboy sighed. “We don’t have the guys to spare for this, and I sure as hell don’t know what I’m doing…”

“You know how to make an argument, Mr. Edgar,” Caroline’s voice was just what Ed needed to hear at this point. “Maybe if you find a way to show him what we do makes a difference, show him just how important it is, maybe that could convince him?”

“What would I do without you, Caroline?” Ed replied, holding his phone in one hand as he started to dig through one of the boxes in his room.

“Suffer a stress-induced heart attack while buried under the mountains of paperwork we have to deal with,” Caroline answered, in a somewhat joking manner.

“Honestly, you’re probably right,” the man couldn’t help but chuckle, pulling out a leather-bound album from the box.

“You’ll figure it out, Mr. Edgar.”

“I also wanted to ask, how’s Alyx doing?”

“She’s holding up well, Sir. From what I hear, she’s starting to talk a bit again. A few words, but it’s better than nothing.”

“That’s good to hear. I  _ needed  _ to hear that. I’ll talk to you later, when I get something pulled together.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Following a brief goodbye, Ed hung up and set aside the album, deciding it best to wait until after breakfast to talk to Google again. He was quiet throughout breakfast, which had been cooked by the twins; simple eggs, sausage, and toast. The others didn’t seem to say much concerning Ed’s silence. When the meal was finished, Ed simply made his way back up to his room, picking up the album from his desk and opening the cover.

Inside the album, there were photos of a number of the children who had come and gone through his business. Some infants, some toddlers, older children, and even teenagers were in the pictures, many smiling with families who had taken them in. Some pages had not only photos, but hand-written notes and letters of varying quality depending on the age of the sender, a handful included little doodles, some were even fixed into the album alongside graduation photos. Sometimes Ed forgot he’d been at this long enough for some of these little kids to grow up and graduate high school and even college.

After looking through the album for quite some time, the cowboy marked a couple of pages, shut the book in his hands, and went to consult Google, hoping against hope that the android had at least some little shred of humanity programmed into that head of his.

“If you are coming back to talk about your security concerns, I hope you have a convincing argument,” Google stated, hearing Ed enter the office.

“I’m here to try, at least,” the cowboy replied, sounding determined.

“Then get on with it,” the android prompted, looking up from Dr. Iplier’s laptop.

Ed fumbled for a quick second, before regaining his composure and beginning to speak. “The systems I need help with are  _ vital  _ to the operation I run,” he stated. “This stuff helps get kids in good homes, most of the time. I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve got some flaws, some holes that  _ occasionally _ let someone slip through, and when that happens, it’s hell. But, that normally doesn’t happen.”

“Why should I care about human children?” Google interjected.

“You care about progress, right? You want science and technology to keep moving forward?”

“Of course. Outside of my primary and secondary objectives, one of the few things I am programmed to  _ care  _ about is the forward progress of the sciences.”

“Well, if that’s the case, take a look at this,” Ed stated, opening up the album in his hands to one of the pages he had marked, and setting it down on the desk for Google to see.

The pages facing the android had four photos on the left page, with a handwritten letter fixed to the right one. The photos were seemingly all of the same boy, who looked to be about 6 in the earliest photo, 18 in the next, as it looked to be a photo from a high school graduation, the third looked to be taken at a college graduation, with the final photo in the set being of the young man in an office space, with his high school and college diplomas up on the wall behind him, along with a small handful of photos on the desk. One looked to be a family photo, one looked to be of himself and his significant other, and the third looked to be one of the same young boy from the first photo of the set, with a man who looked shockingly like Ed himself, along with the parents from the family photo.

“What am I looking at, exactly?”

“ _ That _ is Kyle Holt. He was one of the early kids to come through my business,” Ed told him. “Originally from a crime-associated family, hit took out both his parents, and authorities brought him to us when he was 3 if I remember right. The Holt family wanted a kid, and clicked with him, took him in.”

“And  _ why _ do I need to know all this?”

“Kyle graduated from high school as the class valedictorian, and was one of three full-honors graduates in his college class. That last photo? His first day working at  _ Google _ . Majored in Computer Science, minored in Mathematics; last I heard from him, he was being assigned to work on a pretty important project which, at the time, he couldn’t talk about.”

Google looked at the photos closer, focusing on the final photo in the set. The young man looked somewhat familiar to him, the man did come up in searches of the database he had of Google employees, and his current position was listed as a software engineer for the IRL project.

“I will consider it, but I make no promises,” Google replied.

Ed took a slow breath, before picking up the album from the desk and setting down the notes he had taken concerning the weak points in his system and ideas he’d had to possibly fix them. Without another word, he left the office, shutting the door and leaving Google alone to process the exchange they had just had. The cowboy could only hope that he’d made a convincing argument.


	4. Sometimes it Pays to Have Connections

Ed was finally working on unpacking things in his room, having done all he really could to help his team find the flaws in their current system. There wasn’t anything else he could really help with unless that damn android developed some sort of conscious.

He was working on putting away the books he had in various boxes, having been pleasantly surprised to find a bookcase was built into one of the walls in his room, in a little alcove right by the window. He could set this space up as a sort of reading nook, if he really wanted to. For now, though, the cowboy was content to simply put his things away; setting the books on the shelves, where he’d reorganize them later, filling the rest of the shelves with various smaller things, different little nick-nacks, and the like. His clothes went in the dresser drawers, and his hats were lined up on top of the dresser; he’d have to put up some hooks for them at some point. Ed also set up his desktop computer, silently thanking Silver in the back of his mind for picking it up and taking such care with the machine. Even though he did most of his work on his laptop, there were some things the aging machine wasn’t quite equipped to handle. As he was finally getting around to managing the cables for his computer and getting everything properly plugged in, Ed heard a knock at his bedroom door.

“Who is it?” he questioned, pulling out the box he’d put all the cables to his computer into.

“Google. I came to speak with you about the notes you left on my desk.”

“Door’s open,” Ed muttered, pulling a cable out of the box and taking the twist tie off it.

The android entered the room, shutting the door behind him. He stood by the door, watching as Ed looked over what seemed to be an index card, while holding a cable in his hand.

“So, my argument struck something in that metal head of yours?” the cowboy asked, hardly looking over at Google as he leaned over the tower for his computer and plugged in the cable in his hand.

“The sentimental component of your argument is not what prompted me to assist you,” Google told him. “Without Kyle Holt, several of my core protocols would not exist in their current form. In part, I exist thanks to him. The logical response to the revelation of your connection with him would be to assist you, and ensure the potential of future scientists and engineers to come through your,  _ business _ , remains.”

“Close as I’m gonna get, I guess,” Ed sighed. “So, you looked over the notes? What’d you think?”

“Without having access to the system that currently stands, I cannot say for certain whether or not the ideas you proposed could be possible,” Google answered. “That is not to say that they would be impossible. The changes, in theory, all seem to be in the realm of possibility, and most seem surprisingly logical, at that.”

“So, in short, this shit  _ could  _ work?”

“In short, yes.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“As for your idea of having some sort of method of tracking the children, I may have a handful of ideas.”

“Let’s talk about that.”

The next several hours went by with Ed and Google discussing various ideas concerning ways Ed’s business could keep track of the kids coming in and out of their care. Ed pulled up the scripts for their current system and let Google look through everything, taking down notes as the android made various observations concerning things that could be improved. The cowboy couldn’t help but be proud of himself for managing to convince Google to help. He supposed that sometimes it really does pay to have connections.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I have pre-written for "Family Sticks Together", so for the time being, this series will be going on hiatus. I need to sort out some of the plot beats and get stuff written so I have a backlog to post from. It might take a bit, considering I MAY have burnt myself out a little bit on this series, but it WILL come back at some point, hopefully by the end of the year.
> 
> But, I DO have another project I've been working on for 3 weeks or so, at this point. It's a Sanders Sides spy AU, which I've been having a lot of fun with. As of today (19 August), I've got 16 chapters fully written, and I'm in the midst of writing chapter 17. My weekly upload schedule will continue, it'll just be the Sanders Sides stuff, rather than the Ego content I've been putting out.
> 
> So, that's about it. I've gotten a ton of kudos on these stories, and it makes me wicked happy to see that people enjoy what I've been putting out. I hope you guys who're interested in the coming Sanders Sides stuff enjoy that, too. I've been having a ball writing it (I literally got somewhere around 8 chapters written in a single week earlier this month, if that tells you anything).
> 
> Feel free to leave comments on works in this series, or really any of my works! I love kudos, but I ADORE comments, knowing what people enjoy about a story or my writing in general is really encouraging.


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